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‘Hurting The People It Was Invented To Protect’

I dunno. I think everyone who respects women’s autonomy is an expert, but storytelling is important in the sense that gender ideology tells a story, with words like ‘assigned’, and it’s a compelling but untrue story that will end up hurting the people it was invented to protect. https://t.co/p3W57B3fc1

Members of the transgender community and their supporters plan to protest outside RTÉ studios in Dublin on Tuesday evening over the broadcast of a pre-recorded interview with Father Ted writer Graham Linehan.

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118 thoughts on “‘Hurting The People It Was Invented To Protect’”

“I think everyone who respects women’s autonomy is an expert”. No, Graham. It means only that, respect, which you are showing none of. And you are not trans, nor a doctor, so you are not an expert.
He has an awful habit of claiming his hatred of trans people is down to sticking up for women. I don’t want his so-called help, thanks.

I do not feel threatened by trans people.
I do feel threatened by the world Graham Linehan is creating by targeting them. If he really cared he would be pushing for the best possible health care for kids who think they are trans, not bullying people online who are trans. Their existence is not up for debate.

Are you happy for people to self-declare their gender. If so, are you then happy for those same people who have now declared themselves to be women; using women’s changing rooms in swimming pools, shops etc.
Have you ANY concerns about that.
Have you any concern about advocacy groups going in to schools and those same schools to preach their message. Are you then okay for teenagers to start hormonal therapy? Without any consent from parents?

Yeah kids don’t ever get any sort of medical or health interventions when they’re kids because they’re kids who are too young to know anything about anything. Can’t drive? Can’t get a diagnosis. Of anything.

Or to put it a different way: I described my symptoms to my parents in my own language. They consulted a medical professional who sent me to a hospital where I received surgical treatment for my condition. It probably happens a lot more often than you might suppose, children telling their parents about stuff to do with their bodies and then the parents seeking medical advice resulting in a course of treatment.

Hardly a true equivalence. You went to the hospital, they found unequivocal evidence of a physiological condition that could imminently kill you and took the appropriate action. Emergency action to preserve life is the opposite of an elective therapy to adjust hormonal activity in someone who is naturally by dint of being a teenager already a hormonal tornado.

I complained of a physical condition and we sought expert guidance and followed a course of medical care. Exactly the same principle, except nobody attaches a sense of moral horror to the removal of an appendix that inspires non-professionals to declare definitively that professionals should take their opinions into account when providing care for their patients.

It’s not the same principle at all, Nigel. One disorder presents objective certain evidence of its existence, the other relies on the correct diagnosis in a murky branch of psychology that any professional will tell you we don’t really understand of a patient who would be presenting many of the symptoms even if nothing was amiss. The former would have no consequences whatsoever if it turned out to be unnecessary, the latter could ruin lives if pursued unnecessarily.

Exactly the same principal, just a different degree of difficulty and a lot of moral panic. It definitely sounds like the sort of sensitive and delicate situation that needs a bunch of braying opinionated Daily Mail headline-screaming scaremongers wading in to sort it out.

It’s not just a higher degree of difficulty Nige, it’s insurmountable difficulty vs. no difficulty, very high stakes vs. no stake whatsoever, no imminent risk of death vs. quite certain imminent risk of death. They are not the same, they are not comparable, you fool. And I’m willing to bet there are a lot of transpeople who would resent your offhand trivialisation.

Nor is this a case of moral panic. I’ve leveled no judgements here, I’m merely pointing out the high – risk nature of transitioning the young. So pack up your pathetic attempts at diminution and fupp off back to whatever juvenile debate team sired you.

SOQ find me some research indicating that early transitioning reduces the risk of suicide, or that messing with hormones at a time when they’re already in flux is a recipe for a better-adjusted and happier person. Your article doesn’t refer once too transiting, Lampe isn’t even binary for fupp’s sake

Nige I’m done with you. You’re a prime example of your ilk. I’ve articulated very clearly that my issue here is practical, not ideological. Your hackneyed but inevitable retreat into your own wilfully false perspective disgusts me and I hope you get hit by lighting.

You have failed to make any case that there are any practical reasons for withholding treatment other than vague assertions and a sense that the treatment is worse than the condition. The only practical question worth asking is: what treatments at what stages result in the most positive outcomes? The only people who should be involved in making this decision, like every other health decision about a young person, are the medical professionals, the parents, and the patient. Even that is not ideal given that the health professional or parents may themselves have negative attitudes to transexuality, but it’s better than a load of sanctimonious scaremongers sticking their oars in, too.

Lenihan’s contribution to the Terf war was a man and a trans woman having a fight, trashing a few sets in an episode of The IT Crowd. Someone called it transphobic and since then, he’s been in a childish snit over it ever since. I think he doesn’t care one way or another about trans people, he’s sulking cos someone dared criticise him.

No idea if its true or not but this all seemingly stems from an episode of the IT crowd that some people said could have been taken as mocking trans people. Rather then admit that he might have not been as sensitive to some peoples views but that he meant no harm, he went on the attack and this has escalated in into him seeing trans people as being somehow a threat to all women, calling women traitors who don’t hold his view and launching attacks of his soldiers from mumsnet bizarrely on anyone who criticises him.

How many years did Gay men and Lesbians have to go through being told that they were mentally ill and needed to be cured of their “abberation”? Murderers getting away with “queer bashing” and blaming it on gay panic? Suggestions that gay people shouldn’t be let near children because they’ll prey on them…

How is it that saying those same thing now about trans men and women is okay when saying it about gay men and lesbians isn’t?

From the Irish Times piece:
“The station has said it “won’t be commenting on feedback received in advance of the programme transmission,” a spokesperson said yesterday. It says the report includes 10 contributors “representing a broad range of views” and examines “the exponential growth in the number of young people seeking to change gender, and the implications of the proposed new law allowing them to do so without their parents’ consent.”

There you have it – the debate is not about transgender group rights – it has to do with changing legal and policy framework that could potentially see a significant number of children going down the gender dysphoria road…and whether that is necessarily a positive thing to be advocating.

Exponential? A pile of shweaty bolleaux! Since 2015, the numbers have declined year on year. This is sensationalist bullpoo, attacking a tiny section of Irish society. Bigoted apologists can, in the words of L*nehan himself, fupp off.

It never ceases to surprise me the amount of column inches and online discourse such a tiny minority of people generate. Maybe the Irish Yellow Vest movement could get in touch with whoever is looking after the PR

I had unfollowed Graham Linehan ages ago as he had become insufferably sanctimonious. He had been extremely strident in personally calling out people for their dissenting opinions on any number of ‘right on’ causes and publicly humiliating them. Me thinks some chickens be coming home to roost here.

It’s not about that – it’s about advocacy groups (who not all tran-speople agree with btw – if Linehan is to be believed) over-reaching. This was never about the rights of trans-people – the RTE program discusses “the exponential growth in the number of young people seeking to change gender, and the implications of the proposed new law allowing them to do so without their parents’ consent.”

For anyone protesting Graham Linehan in Donnybrook this evening they might want to bring their placard with ‘Down With That Sort Of Thing’ and wave it outside the American and Israel embassies. While they are in and around that area.
Might as well kill 2 birds with the 1 stone, so to speak.

Is that awfully nice of Mr Linehan to be so caring and protective of transsexual people because he obviously knows best and those silly protesters are just well, silly. But I will bet good money he will never have the backbone to face them.

And, not only is protecting those silly transsexuals who don’t know they are harming themselves, he is also, I assume, protecting REAL women from this awful thing which the vast majority couldn’t give two poos about. I’ll go further and say that some find such representation offensive.

Until you sit down and talk to these people, until you really talk to them, you do not know better Graham, sincerely, you don’t.

Until then you are just a two bit hustler and I know you can do better than that.

You don’t know who Graham Linehan has talked to and you have appointed yourself earlier in the week as ‘one of the few’ on this site who knows much about it because you happen to have a few mates who are trans and you happen to be gay.
I’d posit that you actually lack very deep understanding of the subject at all and should not be equating the struggle for gay rights with this trans issue.

yeah, I mean if he thinks it’s a potentially expansionist advocacy movement…and RTE does too…where’s the harm with that being had out as a contemporary debate on national television? …it surely comes down to the suggestion that gender dysphoria is a less desirable situation and Linehan certainly appears to believe that, as do the great many.

People who think medical conditions come with some sort of attached or intrinsic moral value sthat determines how it should be treated houldn’t be let within a hundred miles of a debate on the condition.

Not the brightest even with your free Google map: Montrosevis nowhere next to US and Israeli embassies. I think you will find the British embassy is. Or will be until they have to move it to the middle of the Irish. I encourage *you to walk there then.

Many things. The activists amongst them would like to allow children to transition without consent of their parents. In fact, they actively encourage it. Generally speaking, the activists amongst them also want to force the rest of society to recognise them as whatever gender they have chosen (i.e you must accept that a trans woman is a “real” woman) and in many cases insist that misgendering them is a form of violence and should be a criminal offence.

Just like some gay men think it’s ok to groom adolescent boys? – I mean seriously, we have to look out for the interests of young and vulnerable children.

If there is no sign of smoke, why explore it? If a child is has gender dysphoria issues, is it not advisable to play things out with a psychologist or someone better equipped – or should the parent go out and just buy a new wardrobe of clothes?

Excuse me? Men who groom adolescent boys are exactly the same as men who groom adolescent girls, they are paedophiles and neither have anything to do with counselling a kid who may be on the verge of attempting suicide because they are being bullied.

Why are you asking what trans people are looking for, other than to be treated decently as human beings and to receive appropriate medical and health interventions? It’s an anti-trans amateur who’s going on Prime Time, not a trans person.

They should get the same access to the expert health care they require in the same way every other citizen does, and I know of no specific legislative proposals related to trans issues. But that’s just me. I am most certainly not telling you what ‘they’ want.

One person mentioned human rights. What human right is it. Please be specific. Does it require a law change? I am trying to get a handle on this. I saw what happened in Canada when they wrote a terrible law that enforced compelled speech which is ridiculous and something governments should stay away from. Its very dangerous.

I hear people calling him transphobic. It seems to be a term that’s been thrown around lazily. In law we are supposed to be very careful with our words and how we define it. Can anyone define it here. What views would you have that would be regarded as transphobic. Just interested. Its my last comment on the subject. New to broadsheet. There are some individuals that make good points but the vast majority just seem to make rather sharp remarks about each other

Dr. Chimp above answered your questions as have I.
The rest just move from one social crusade to the next and want to appear to be right without really thinking about the issues.
They are betraying and diminishing women.

Last time i checked Ireland had no hate crime laws-despite numerous false promises by FG to introduce some.

“Criminal Law (Hate Crime) Bill, together with the accompanying ‘Out of the Shadows’: Legislating for Hate Crime in Ireland Report, was presented to the Government in 2015 by the Hate and Hostility Research Group following a recommendation from The National Steering Group Against Hate Crime.

To date, the Government has failed to take steps to introduce it into law, leaving minorities in Ireland without protection.”

Haven’t a clue about any this,I like think of myself as non-binary and post sexual orientation, in that i could not give a flying fook,what you do or don’t,how you dress, what bathroom you use….
Interact quite a bit in LA/NY with transgender people, my own personal experiences have been great,lovely humans very empathetic,kind and cool.

Whenever i hear people in Ireland saying things like ‘protecting the children/kids’ i always think run its a priest !

The govt needs pass some hate crime laws and protect minorities like this from some the silly billy pants posting on here.

That Psychotherapist, Caspian, should be allowed conduct the proposed research and the university stopping the research because it may be “of offensive” to some should be held to account for such a decision.

Well, if you wouldn’t date a trans person, you are technically transphobic – at least by their definition. And just so you know, they present sexual orientation and gender identity on an x-y axis …where gender is non-deterministic variable – sexual orientation is thankfully deterministic (for now). Tomorrow’s weather forecasting graduates will be able to find employment in modelling these highly complexly related mixed environmental and innate factors – nightly televised trigger warnings to avert wide emotional violence inflicted on the “weakest” in the society.

As a privileged rural-stock, cisgender, heterosexual, presumably-Catholic white male, the only thing you can guarantee is that obedience and social compliance will become increasingly onerous in your lifetime. In the end, if you try to claim lack of familiarity with their rhetoric, it will fall under some hate code or other.

And we are only a few short years down this long and happy new road to mindless progressive fairness….it looks a lot like men have been forced into a Battle Royal type game scenario.

That’s a good point about sexism. It’s not sexist to treat those within your own gender-lines like crap – so soft bullying of a woman who has convincingly transitioned could fall under “establishing ground-rules among the lads”, see Toxic Masculinity for more….you might get away with it given a trans-woman is by all measures scientific, a man.

When dating, be extremely careful of fat-shaming – if 20% of the women out there are fat, then 20% (1 in 5) of the people you date will need to be fat…just so you are in compliance, at all times. Unfortunately, the window for establishing “bald-shaming” has come and gone – we rally should have made more hay when the patriarchy was at full capacity.

What is ridiculous… was the fact Dr Caspian’s research on those post operation, including those who wished they hadn’t transitioned, was refused in case it may offend some. That’s basically refusing to never allow test results on the success of operations.

What is ridiculous… was when the TENI spokesperson compared getting common cosmetic surgery to genitoplasty.

What is ridiculous… is ignoring the rise of the condition among young girls, in what was previously a male dominated issue.

What is ridiculous… is ignoring Dr O’Malley who says with regard to how she would under today’s views likely be put on a path to transition, when what she was going through was a phase.

As for your own ridiculous statement about howling at the moon… one does not wait until one, or someone close to you, is suffering to become interested in how well run one’s countries health system is operated.

What is ridiculous… is suggesting that “middle ages str8 men” or women should have no say. It is that age of people who have kids needing help. The irony of such a view from a commenter who has expressly shown themselves to be an antinatalist, is well… ridiculous.
Your jokes are unfunny, and unnecessary.

What is ridiculous is that you seem to feel you have all the answers without even ever speaking to on trans person Clamps. In all the words you have typed about this subject. not one about the horrendous discrimination trans people face.

The mount of people identifying as gay, bisexual or lesbian is growing year by year and likewise trans. The reason is because we are becoming a more accepting society but, make no mistake, they were always there.

We do not have the controversy seen elsewhere on this subject because people know that the numbers are so small it not going to affect them in any shape or form. Why you have a bee in your bonnet is another story.

Research proposals get turned down all the time, that does not mean other research is not being performed.
Perhaps they are merely trying to demystify a procedure that clearly inspires visceral disgust and horror in some, and perhaps they are trying to do it to ease the fears of those contemplating it, not pander to precious snowflakes on the sidelines screaming about mutilation?
Providing treatment for a condition that is being increasingly recognised is the opposite of ignoring it. Going into a moral panic about it is the opposite of a proper response to it.
I am not convinced by this counter-factual. There’s a bad-faith trans-panic assumption being made that people want kids who don’t have the condition to be surgically transitioned, which is bordering on blood-libel.
Being middle aged and straight and of the age to have kids gives you the right to have a say in the treatment of other people’s kids? Yeah, at the end of the day, that is what this is all about. Ridiculous, and incredibly dangerous for the kids.

Clampers, people like SOQ (the resident expert on this apparently) and Nigel are wilfully blind on this and will only double down. I never had much time for either of them but they’ve actually gone down in my estimation if that were possible. The only bad faith here is from them. Ignorance plain and simple.
Nigel’s last post defending the shutting down of research confirms his wingnut status.

‘Defending the shutting down of research.’ Let me clarify – I heartily encourage further research. When you go on national television and essentially claim you were denied funding because of political correctness you can feck off. As for the rest, you can feck off, too. It’s a tiny, vulnerable, unfairly despised section of the population and here it is being monstered and villified with absolutely no regard to their health and well-being.

Dr Caspian has worked with the LGBT community for years.
If he says that is what the university said, that they didn’t want to offend, I believe him.
Just because you don’t like it, doesn’t make it so.

Again, I say, you are without doubt ideologically blind, and clearly raging against a call for more research. Regardless of you saying you want more.

You’re simply just saying one thing and raging against that same thing in the next sentence.

You’re a confused and deluded outraged silly billy, and clearly so.

Your claims of monstering and vilification are really you going off on a rant to justify to yourself that that is what is happening, when clearly you’re just trying to shut down discussion, evidenced in your confused rant about Dr Caspian above.

Stop suggesting that’s what I said and answer directly if you are even remotely capable of taking your head out your ideological backside.
You’re being disingenuous, and a willful liar by taking the “so what you are saying” route, in fairness, and displaying that truth that you’re not trustworthy nor honest in any discussion.

@SOQ, Clampers doesn’t need walk around with an anecdote in his front pocket – as if “I once shaked a black man’s hand” was ever meaningful. He has cited an instance when someone who has done the research and has a more qualified opinion was denied a voice on the matter. Wake up – if those who you disagree with behaved in this way, you would take deep exception to it…so you have to entertain the idea that you might be deluding yourself if you think you stand for fair play. You strike me as someone in middle years, which makes it all the more shameful.

kNige is one of a kind in this manner – must have a live feed from CNN or something. This mentality that just because Dr Caspian concluded something not entirely supportive of the idea that we should expose children to these ideas, he is therefore the enemy of the movement (a movement that is apparently more divided than any of you appreciate – just like many in the LGB felt a mixed about adding T+ ..all the trimmings).

This issue is not related to how trans people are treated in accessing welfare, health etc – this is about how we raise children